Papaya

The title here suggests a very wholesome fruit. Soft/sweet when ripe and crisp/tart when raw.  Full of healthy nutrients this fruit is popular in the tropics and carries a lot of medicinal properties.  This is also what a precious two year old lovingly calls her Papa.  "Papaya"!  It's a pretty common practice that we sometimes refer to our children as fruits we love...and why not.  Our children are sweet and soft.  Their laughter is the best cure for all our sorrows and they are indeed the 'apple of our eye'.  Therefore it is perhaps not surprising that children call us back in the same terms.  Every time I refered to my daughter as a pumpkin, she would grin and give me a hug with 'Momma pun-kin'!  Between my daughter and son I have in the past been a strawberry, a blueberry, a tomato and ofcourse a pun-kin.  And we can't complain much about such nomenclature when we find that an innovater like Steve Jobs named his 'baby' after his favorite fruit too!

A simple vanilla cake layered with cream cheese/butter cream frosting was the choice for this birthday cake from a daughter to her father.  A set of tennis lessons as a birthday gift from Mommy completed the cake theme.